• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘Oh it’s not the fighting I’m worried about,’ he remarked absently, almost to himself. ‘There’s something else up there, in the phone system.’

Eleana stopped, one hand paused in counting the remaining ammo in her pouch. One bullet dropped through her still fingers and she frowned. She sensed the Doctor reaching down and picking it up, offering it back to her. ‘Are you all right?’ he was asking again but this time in a concerned voice. She could barely hear him through the pounding in her skull.

‘Eleana?’

His hand on her arm brought her crashing back into focus. She nodded to him, then indicated the alley he should run for. ‘We should move. This place is far too exposed. I’ll cover you.’

He nodded and started somehow bundling the armful of tape into the pockets of his dark red jacket. He got carefully to his feet, keeping his head low, crouching almost double to stay out of sight. Eleana visualised the line of sight to the sniper’s probable position, took a deep breath and stood. She got one shot off and dived back even as the Doctor dashed across the street and into the dark gloom of the alleyway. Five, maybe six rounds hit the radiator of the car, zinging loudly. They had more advanced weapons than she did. Bloody foreign intervention. Always aiding the side they thought was of most use to them, not the side that was the best. She loaded another round, took a deep breath and ran for the alley. Stooping low and running fast. She could almost sense the bullets at her heels. She got a few feet into the darkness and relaxed, straightening and leaning against the cool wall.

‘Eleana?’

He was still there, hovering in the gloom. It was people like him and Anji and Jueves, with their romantic notions about this war, that caused these problems. They’d report back to Europe and America and then those countries would refuse aid to the revolution. So afraid that their own proletariat would rise against them. Stopping arms getting through, leaving them to the mercies of the Communists and fascists. Moscow and Seville wanted to rule this town and Eleana was against them both. Her head was screaming now, so she could hardly understand her own words, her own thoughts.

The Doctor had turned his back on her, started up the incline, stepping around the rubbish. Eleana rechecked that there was a bullet in the breach. Raising the stock to her shoulder, she took careful aim in the centre of that flaunting red coat and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Chapter Ten

El Detingut

The gun exploded, the firing pin flying backwards. Eleana recoiled, screaming. One whole side of her face was agony, the cool air on the raw skin burning her.

She was aware of the cobbles pressing into her spine, the hot metal of the rifle under her arm. Her head was still thrumming with pain, a steady hard ache underlying the sharp ice of her face. She started to raise one hand up, touched the undamaged side. Even putting her fingers on to that made her nerves scream. Then a strong arm was taking hold of her wrist, pulling her hand away.

‘Try not to move, let me look.’

The Doctor. Eleana pushed at him with her arm, broke his hold. She tried to use her right arm to push herself off the alley floor but her shoulder refused the weight and the arm was almost dead. Must have been the recoil. The Doctor’s hands were taking her arms again, trying to help her up.

‘Get off me!’

‘Eleana...?’

‘Get off! Get off!’

She tried to open both eyes but her right one was clogged and she almost screamed when the muscles moved. She squinted instead with just her left, saw the creature crouched beside her. He was in the blue and black uniform of the Asaltos and his face...

It was as if there were many, overlaid. The tired, charming Doctor she had known was reveal as all harsh angles, implacable cruel lines. The gentle half-smile was sardonic, vicious. This man, this man was a killer. And the face was flickering, jolting. Like some crude animation. She scrambled backwards, using her good arm as leverage until her back hit a wall. The pain jarred through her dislocated